CleverDude: On the Side: 5 Ways to Make Money Working Online from Home

If you scroll through the internet you will find hundreds of posts on how to make money online. Many of them are scams, or such low paying jobs that you don’t want to waste your time. You can spend hours making ten dollars, or even lose money on some deals, but there are more legitimate ways to make money working online from home.

There are dozens of them, but here are five that are potentially the most profitable. Just remember if you are going to make money, it will depend largely on the amount of effort you put into it initially. However, many of the methods listed here will turn into passive income if you use them properly.

Create a Blog or Website

If you don’t have one for your business or yourself already, you can create a blog or a website. The first step is to choose and buy a domain name based on what you do, what services you offer, or what products you want to sell.

In some cases, the product or service you sell can be space on your website itself. Once you have built enough content and authority, you can monetize your website this way, but even before that, you can make at least some money from your website or blog. There are several ways to do this:

Affiliate Links: You can use affiliate links to link to product pages, and receive a percentage of the purchase if the person who clicks buys the item.

Native Ads: You can run native ads from Google, Amazon, or Outbrain on your site, and make money every time someone clicks on the link.

Sell your own products or services: Offer your own products you sell or services you provide, and let people pay for them online.

Once you have established your site even more, you can look for sponsors and use other ways to monetize your site as well. The key is that at first you will need to create content and get some organic traffic coming to your site through Search Engine Optimization. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can either learn it or hire a professional to help you.

They key to this is marketing, and this is another place where your website comes in. If you already have a good following, and you have a number of followers on social media who trust your expertise in a certain area, you are more likely to sell more books. For people to know your book exists, they need to be able to discover and purchase it.

Still, once you get sales rolling and you have an ongoing marketing plan, you can sell a pretty decent number of books, and even though it may not cover all of your bills (at least at first), it is a legitimate way to make money working from home, and other than ongoing marketing, this turns into nearly passive income.

Sell Audiobooks on Audible

In a society where everyone seems to be constantly on the go, people listen to audio books more than ever before, and through Amazon’s Audible program nearly anyone can create them.

Again, the key to selling more books is marketing, which can be aided by your website and social media. Another key, however, it to have a quality eBook. If you have a good reading voice and decent recording equipment, you can create a pretty good eBook on your own. However, if you need to, hire help with this process.

You simply reading your book online probably won’t make you a lot of money unless you do it properly and you have something unique and exciting to say. Whether this is through fiction or sharing a nonfiction story or your skills and savvy, be sure your content is well written, edited, and the recording is of the highest quality possible.

Offer Your Skills on Fiverr

Are you a writer, graphic designer, photographer, or do you have another unique skill people are willing to pay you to do? You can offer your services on sites like Fiverr, where people come to hire professionals to do tasks for them.

Don’t let the name of the site fool you. While many services are offered for $5 on Fiverr, you don’t have to price your services that low. Also understand that Fiverr is also filled with amateurs as well as professionals, and for you to get the best clients there, you need to stand out from the rest.

Be sure your proposal and your pitch is professionally designed, and that you highlight your skills so others can see why your work is worth the extra investment.

Sell Items on eBay or Etsy

Not only can you sell your products on your own website, but you can increase your audience and reach by selling them on eBay or Etsy. This is especially true if you are crafty and can make items to sell, or if you have a source for cheap products you can make a profit on and distribute.

The key is to know what you are actually making on each item, set reasonable shipping rates, and be sure to diversify. In some cases, your items might also be profitable on Amazon Marketplace or other sites.

Just be sure that before you market too much, you will be able to keep up with demand. Being unable to fulfill orders can potentially kill your business before you even really get started.

There are many legitimate and illegitimate ways to make money online. These five ways can be profitable if you put the work you need to into them first. Monetizing your website, selling eBooks or audiobooks, or even selling your skills or other items can make you money online from home as long as you treat them like what they are: businesses.